City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2019 Visualizing the Decline of the Corset Business Iris Finkel The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3062 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] VISUALIZING THE DECLINE OF THE CORSET BUSINESS ADVERTISING ACTIVITY IN THREE WOMEN’S MAGAZINES (1905-1929) By IRIS FINKEL A master’s capstone project submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Liberal Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, The City University of New York 2019 © 2019 Iris Finkel All Rights Reserved ii Visualizing the Decline of the Corset Business Advertising Activity in Three Women’s Magazines (1905-1929) by Iris Finkel This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Liberal Studies in satisfaction of the capstone project requirement for the degree of Master of Arts. ____________________ ___________________________ Date Professor Eugenia Paulicelli Capstone Project Advisor ____________________ ___________________________ Date Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis Acting Executive Officer THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract Visualizing the Decline of the Corset Business Advertising Activity in Three Women’s Magazines (1905-1929) by Iris Finkel Advisor: Professor Eugenia Paulicelli The corset defined a woman’s silhouette for nearly four hundred years. It continues to fascinate and inspire new ways to study its place in culture. Taking a digital humanities approach, my project encompasses visualizations of metadata from advertisements for foundation garments in Harper’s Bazaar, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Vogue from 1905 through 1929. These visualizations represent the marketing behavior of corset manufacturers, a well-established group of businesses that benefited from the industrial revolution to produce and sell a type of garment that held a constant place in women’s wardrobes. The marketing savvy of a sophisticated trade association assured that corsets were ubiquitous, as evidenced by the amount of times the term appeared in advertisements in women’s magazines from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Manufacturers were not alone in advertising their wares; they partnered with retailers and others to share advertising costs and boost the visibility of their products. Advertising was paramount to corset manufacturers who gained leverage through the high circulation of popular women’s publications. iv Watching the trends in advertising is a data driven strategy to monitor the waning of a staple with a long, storied past. The findings from my study confirmed the expectation of declining corset advertising during the period when a number of forces prompted a revolution in women’s attitude and attire. The metadata I collected were the results of searches in ProQuest databases, accessed through the New York Public Library. I downloaded the search results and managed the data in Microsoft Excel, which acted as a data source for the visualizations in Tableau Public. v Acknowledgements I wish to express my gratitude to those whose guidance and support helped to shape this project. I am immensely grateful to my advisor, Eugenia Paulicelli, who opened my eyes to the many dimensions of fashion studies and indulged my requests to experiment with new digital tools to fulfill otherwise traditional course requirements. I owe a big thanks to my colleagues in the Libraries at Hunter College who never failed to accommodate my irregular schedule and encourage my interests, and to my colleagues in the Adrian G. Marcuse Library at LIM College for access to valuable resources that facilitated my research. And, last but not least, to my family whose steadfast patience was exactly what I needed, and to Steve, especially, I owe a world of thanks for saving me hours of frustration by contributing immeasurable design expertise. vi Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... vi List of Charts ................................................................................................................. viii Digital Manifest ................................................................................................................ ix A Note on Technical Specifications .................................................................................. x Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 Context ................................................................................................................................ 3 Analysis ............................................................................................................................... 8 Appendix .......................................................................................................................... 10 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 20 vii List of Charts Full charts can be found in the appendix. Links to the website with charts are listed below title of chart. 1. Vogue: Histogram of ads with corsets per month (top) Histogram of ads without corsets per month (bottom) http://fashionindh.org/visualizingcorsetdecline/vogue.html 2. Vogue: Line chart of ads with corsets per year (left) Line chart of ads without corsets per year (right) http://fashionindh.org/visualizingcorsetdecline/vogue.html 3. Harper’s Bazaar: Histogram of ads with corsets per month (top) Histogram of ads without corsets per month (bottom) http://fashionindh.org/visualizingcorsetdecline/harpersbazaar.html 4. Harper’s Bazaar: Line chart of ads with corsets per year (left) Line chart of ads without corsets per year (right) http://fashionindh.org/visualizingcorsetdecline/harpersbazaar.html 5. Ladies’ Home Journal: Histogram of ads with corsets per month (top) Histogram of ads without corsets per month (bottom) http://fashionindh.org/visualizingcorsetdecline/ladieshomejournal.html 6. Ladies’ Home Journal: Line chart of ads with corsets per year (left) Line chart of ads without corsets per year (right) http://fashionindh.org/visualizingcorsetdecline/ladieshomejournal.html 7. Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Ladies’ Home Journal: Histogram of ads with corsets per month in all three publications (top) Line charts of ads with corsets in all three publications (bottom) http://fashionindh.org/visualizingcorsetdecline/summary.html 8. Total ads with corsets, per year / composite of three publications http://fashionindh.org/visualizingcorsetdecline/summary.html 9. Corset companies advertising in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar http://fashionindh.org/visualizingcorsetdecline/summary.html viii Digital Manifest I. Capstone Whitepaper (PDF) II. WARC file a. Digital Edition Archived version of http://fashionindh.org/visualizingcorsetdecline/index.html * Metadata downloaded from ProQuest databases do not accompany this project. Search structures used can be found on the following page. ix A Note on Technical Specifications I. Metadata for advertisements in Harper’s Bazaar, Ladies’ Home Journal and Vogue for the period 1905-1929 were downloaded from ProQuest databases accessed through the New York Public Library. o Publication: Harper’s Bazaar o Fields used: Publication, Issue Date, Company o Publication: Ladies’ Home Journal o Fields used: Publication, Issue Date o Publication: Vogue o Fields used: Publication, Issue Date, Company II. Microsoft Excel was used to manage data and serve as a local data source of downloaded data. III. Tableau Public was the visualization tool used for this study. IV. Website on Reclaim Hosting developed in CSS and HTML. http://fashionindh.org/visualizingcorsetdecline/index.html The following search structures can be used to reproduce results. Each publication was searched independently of the others using Advanced Search. [Publication] represents either Harper’s Bazaar, Ladies’ Home Journal, or Vogue. 1. [Publication] AND corset NOT (lingerie OR brassiere OR undergarment OR girdle OR reducer). Select Advertisement for Document Type, and Specific Date Range, January 1, 1905 – December 31, 1929. 2. [Publication] AND corset in Title NOT (lingerie OR brassiere OR undergarment OR girdle OR reducer). Select Advertisement for Document Type, and Specific Date Range, January 1, 1905 – December 31, 1929. x 3. [Publication] AND (lingerie OR brassiere OR undergarment OR girdle OR reducer) NOT corset. Select Advertisement for Document Type, and Specific Date Range, January 1, 1905 – December 31, 1929. Some data cleaning was required to eliminate unused fields, format dates, and parse company names. xi Introduction Inspiration for Visualizing the Decline of the Corset Business came from several places. For a paper I wrote in a Fashion and Law course, I focused on the women who played a part in Prohibition in the United States. The three groups of women who figured large during this period were the Women’s Christian